


handle with caution

by Ariesgirl666



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Coven
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Graphic description of bruises caused by rape, Missing Scene, mention of rape, plot hole - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-08
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-07-08 15:21:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15933155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ariesgirl666/pseuds/Ariesgirl666
Summary: “Stop doing that with your face,” Madison retorts. She takes a seat on a planter opposite Cordelia. “I need help.”This originated after a conversation with @it's-a-goode-day about why Madison had bruises and scars during 3x01 and 3x02 but they were completely gone when we saw her in her bra and underwear in 3x03.Non-graphic mentions of rape.





	handle with caution

“Cordelia?”

Startled, Cordelia drops the vial in her hands. Luckily, it was only filled with water. She turns to see the student she’d least expect to visit her. Madison Montgomery stands in a long black dress, looking irritable. Cordelia puts on her best teacherly smile. “How can I help you, Madison?”  
“Stop doing that with your face,” Madison retorts. She takes a seat on a planter opposite Cordelia. “I need help.”

Cordelia remembered seeing Madison’s face after she’d found out about her weakness. “Madison, I won’t tell anyone about your heart murmur,” she promises urgently.  
“It’s not that. You heal people, right?”  
“Yes.”

Madison shifts her feet. “Promise not to freak out.”  
“I assure you I’ll try,” Cordelia says gently, taking care not to frighten the telekinetic witch away. Madison abruptly yanks the hem of her long dress up to her waist, revealing hideous bruises in all shades of yellow, green, blue, and purple on her legs, the inside of her thighs, her stomach.

“What happened to you?” Cordelia murmurs, letting her fingers trail over the bruises. Madison flinches at the touch. “I fell down some stairs.”

Cordelia isn’t sure whether or not to press the girl for the truth. “Lie down on the table,” she instructs, clearing some of her plants off to make room. Madison obeys, watching Cordelia guardedly. Cordelia smears some paste from various jars onto the fresher looking bruises, carefully dabs some blood away from Madison’s knee. She tries to open Madison’s thighs but the smaller woman resists with a pained hiss. “Madison I need to see what happened in order to help you,” Cordelia says severely. Madison relents, opening her legs. She isn’t wearing underwear (this isn’t particularly shocking, knowing the girl as she does) and her vagina is swollen red and raw. The insides of her thighs are very badly bruised, and there are fingermarks indented on her hips. Cordelia may have lived a sheltered life, but she knows a rape victim when she sees one. Abruptly, everything fits together in her head. “That’s why you flipped that bus,” she says, and Madison stubbornly refuses to meet her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
“You did it because they raped you.”  
“You don’t even know I was at that party.”  
“Madison, I’m not going to tell anyone,” Cordelia says, but Madison scoffs and rolls her eyes. The other girl’s snarky reply is cut off by a groan of pain as Cordelia applies peroxide to some of the bloody sores, and then soothes it with her own scented leaf balm. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Cordelia murmurs. Madison tries to ignore her as Cordelia works her way up Madison’s legs. “No wonder Zoe was so distraught. Did she…she didn’t leave you there, did she?” It seemed against their Black Widow’s nature, but Cordelia had never been a good judge of human behavior. That was part of the reason she isolated herself in her greenhouse to begin with.

“She tried to save me,” Madison says as if the words are being dragged out of her with a hook. “Noble little virgin, isn’t she?”

Cordelia doesn’t respond. “Keep these pressed to your wounds all the time. Come back when you need them changed in a day. Your bruises should clear up. Do you need anything for the pain?”  
Madison groans slightly as she gets back on her feet, her legs a mess of chalky yellow-green leaf balms and bloodied bandages and peroxide. “I can handle pain,” she says, and it might have sounded more impressive if her eyes weren’t so sad.

Cordelia blurts out, “This wasn’t your first time being raped.”

Madison glares at her then, raw and hurt and angry, maybe the first genuine emotion Cordelia’d seen on the movie star’s face that wasn’t processed and packaged in sarcasm and cynicism. “It’s none of your _business_ ,” she says through gritted teeth. “And if you tell anyone I swear to God I’ll find a way to kill you, bitch.” Madison storms off before Cordelia can say anything else, not that she would’ve known what to say.

Cordelia sits back down, her head in her hands. Fiona’s people skills clearly weren’t genetic.But more importantly -what kind of coven were they if they couldn’t prevent a teenage girl from getting raped? A small, dark part inside of Cordelia said that the boys on the bus deserved to die. That meant that the frat boy Zoe had visited in the hospital, she’d also killed because of Madison. Cordelia ignores all the moral greyness of the situation and takes one second to be hopeful about the girls showing some loyalty towards each other. Then she hears crashing and swearing and screaming from the witch house, a telltale sign that Queenie and Madison were having another one of their pointless fights, and Cordelia groans. It’s so much easier healing physical wounds then the other kind. A guilty part of Cordelia wants to tell Fiona to teach the coven, wipe her hands of it, and stay here with her plants. But Cordelia knows firsthand what can happen to a young girl left at the mercy of her beloved _Mother,_ so she stifles the thought, tightens her ponytail, and puts on her best serious face.

Even her cat looks like he’s laughing at her.

 

 


End file.
